Author: daryl

All I Want For Christmas…

Is some data management. Really. You have no idea.

So it is Christmas Eve. The oddest Christmas Eve I’ve ever spent. There are about a hundred projects I can be doing, but nothing urgent or pressing. I know we usually shoot a new video on Friday’s, and drop the next one onto YouTube, but we opted to skip tomorrow, since it is, well it is Christmas, and truth be told, my daughter has exactly 7 days left to finish her third semester of her vet tech course. Parasites. Something like that. Canine, Feline, Avian, she is spouting nematodes, protozoans, and odd things that sound yucky, but totally fascinate her. The only tradition we have done so far today is our Christmas Eve Sushi Dinner. Of course it had to be take out this year. We did it for lunch.

I decorated. Minimally. We have animals. They get into mischief. My daughter added the Swedish touches, since she is half Swedish or at least Scandinavian.

We got our first snow. The dogs watched carefully and then leaped for joy when we let them outside. They don’t want to come in. Sadly it is supposed to rain 2″ tomorrow, which means all the snow will be gone. 60 degrees, flood everything and then drop to 27 degrees overnight so everything turns to a sheet of ice. Fortunately I don’t have anywhere to go.

So it is just Bri and me for Christmas. We will Zoom with my son and open gifts in the morning. We will Zoom with my family tomorrow afternoon. With the passing of my step dad two weeks ago, my mom is now with my Maryland sister for the holidays so I’ll get to spend time with her virtually, which I didn’t get to do when we drove to the burial, 3 hours, stood in the pouring rain well away from the family, with a mask, and then got in the car and drove home. By then it was rush hour on the Garden State Parkway, so the trip home was longer coming home. This whole year has been so odd, so sad, and yet, I’m an optimist at heart, and I constantly look for the silver linings in everything. It is how I get through life.

I almost never make new year resolutions, because largely my life is what it is, busy, crazy, creative, fun, and there isn’t much I’d change. But this year, though it is all of the above, however, I never go out. I never get to move around, exercise, and I’m really feeling it. On encouragement from a group of weaving friends scattered all over the country, we meet via zoom every Wednesday, there was all kinds of heavy duty suggestions to just get out and walk. So I did. I got up at a decent hour, dealt with the animals, and then went out and walked, some 6000 steps. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’m out of shape. I hurt all over. But it was beautiful. And quiet, and peaceful, and perfect. I went out and walked this morning as well.

I did finally finish my run of dishtowels, though they are a bit larger than I usually make, and one of the recipients enthusiastically said they were more like hand towels and should be in the bathroom. Sure, they work fine as hand towels too…

I of course had lots of help.

But with dogged determination, the knots came up the back of the loom and 15 yards of 8/2 cotton got cut off the loom, washed, dried, hemmed, and either shipped or driven around and dropped at front doors. This is Strickler 728 if you are a weaver and have Strickler’s book of 8 shaft patterns.

And so what’s up with the data? I’m actually drowning in it. I’m trying to work with my tech support to get a back up plug in for my blog, which has more than 12 years, and 800 plus posts in it. With all the hacking going on around the world, if Word Press gets hacked, I’m sort of screwed. So that’s sort of an ongoing thing we are trying to work out, but there are other data issues.

I am generally organized, but 6000 emails in my inbox, no matter now much I try to file and stay on top of things, is overwhelming. I have to try harder to spend the time working through the backlog. Truth is, I don’t want to organize 6000 emails, I want to be in my studio designing or inventing stuff. It is what I do best.

And all the pattern directions need to be updated, because now I have all these cool YouTube videos that tell you with each step, to watch this particular video for more information. And we have to add the logo to everything.

And the worst job of all, is my images. So I have a decent system for storing images, and they are backed up regularly to the cloud. But the folder with all of my images, dating back to 2008 (before that images are all stored on CD’s which is a whole ‘nother issue), is 121 GB, 916 sub folders with 43,000 files, presumably that means 43,000 images. The problem is, when I’m trying to write an article, a blog post, develop a tutorial, a PowerPoint seminar, or even just help illustrate a technique, I have to have a rapid way of searching through that data base of 43,000 images to find what I need. And I actually do. I use an image organizing file, Adobe Bridge, which I love, and it allows me to add keywords to each image so a quick sort will bring up all the images say, on bound buttonholes, or my tartan plaid fabric (which I recently had to do for an article coming out in Handwoven Magazine.) The only problem with this system is adding the keywords in a timely manner. Like as soon as I import them from my phone or camera.

And therein lies the problem. It is sort of hit or miss. So I spend hours looking through 916 folders to find what I know is there. My goal or resolution for the new year, if you will, is to get the keywords under control, or at least assigned. I started this morning. There were a number of subfolders where I did already add them. But there were just as many without. So I sit with my screen, folder by folder, working from a data base I created of key words, and assign.

I’ve found images I didn’t know I had. I’ve found images that are tough to look at, of my late husband in his last months. I’m working backwards and am mid way through 2016. That’s the year he died. But this is a good exercise. And I have the time. It is winter. And Covid. And this is the first Christmas it will be just me and my daughter. And the animals. Usually they are boarded because we go spend time with loved ones.

As the year draws to a close, this has been the most bizarre year I’ve ever experienced, but not the worst. Having my son away, deployed overseas for a couple of years, having watched my husband die of cancer, those were really bad years. So far I’ve been healthy, and busy and I have lots to keep me occupied in the studio. I have more ideas than you can imagine, more yarn than God, I started up the dyepots yesterday morning, and so there will be color this winter. I have garments to make, cloth to sew. I have videos to shoot, and stories to tell. And lots of remote teaching in the new year. And lots and lots of data to be corralled and organized. Sigh…

To all of my readers, please be safe, we have all come so far. Please help me hope for light, peace and grace, civility, kindness, and health for the new year. I wish all of you lots of opportunities to be creative, to be with those you love, even if it means an old fashioned phone call, or an old fashioned letter in the mail. My daughter sends out about a dozen cards and letters every couple of days. There is something gentle and safe about communicating with a card or note, with lots of fun stickers, and receiving one in the mail. And zooming with friends means you stop and spend an hour just being with each other. Wine helps.

I wish you all good cheer, good health, and great stories to tell.

Stay tuned…

Nothing stays the same…

This is the season of light, but it has been some of the darkest times this generation has experienced. The promise of a new year, a new administration, a new vaccine, and in 13 days, daylight will begin to build again, all give a sense of hope and possibilities.

After more than 800 blog posts, I’ve had a bit of a glitch, that started humorously and then turned wicked serious as I blew up the hosting company server with one of my posts. The post was called, That’s not why I did it… I wrote it after lots of sturm und drang, summarizing the post with the peace and serenity of making order out of chaos. I thought it was a rather clever post, and then moved on.

Within a week, I got an email from my hosting company, shutting down my blog site, for nefarious activity, and hogging more than 55% of the shared server my site is on, slowing everyone else down. I panicked, called them, had a lovely person talk me through a few things, what I could do on my end, transferred me to their security team, and in the background they updated my site to the newest and latest version of WordPress.

Turns out, a relative, who is a software designer/developer liked the post so much, he posted it on a forum specifically for software designer/developers, and the post went viral. If it wasn’t so devastating, it would be hilarious. This relative forwarded me the string of comments posted by the developers, and truth be told, I almost fell out of my office chair laughing.

There was a bit of weaving language in that post, assuming that it would be read by the weaving community, but the gist of the post could be understood by everyone. The developers’ comments included things like “I googled Differential Sett and came up with nothing. (That’s because my daughter made up the term for her lecture for the Pioneer Valley Guild remote lecture she was working on). There were comments like, “Gee, is this what we sound like to non computer people?” And then following the comments as they tried to take apart the technical jargon I used, so they could more clearly understand the nuances of the post. As of today, there are more than 42,000 views. And you can read some of the comments here. It is enlightening…

The downside of all this once my hosting company updated everything and gave me a list of what my own tech support needs to do to add plugins, etc. is that I opened WordPress to type in this blog, and everything, I mean everything has changed. I am not even sure how to add a picture. (Though I eventually figured that out, I don’t see where to add keywords.) There are all kinds of updates I need to do to plugins that completely confound me, and nothing looks like it did for the last 12 years. This is not my strength, and I don’t want to spend the time to make it my strength.

My strengths lie in my creativity, my hands, and my mad sewing/weaving skills. They have taken a lifetime to perfect, I’m still learning, making mistakes, and I will continue to learn and make mistakes until I can’t do this anymore, my body quits or I die. The future is never guaranteed. Though it looks like 2021 is promising, we are still in a pandemic, we are still in a divided country politically, and winter is just starting. A beloved relative is in the final days of life. I cannot be there beside him. We cannot gather as a family, and that just sucks. Once he passes, we can’t hold a funeral, we can’t hold each other, and all I can do is make the best use of each day I’m given.

The new Youtube channel The Weaver Sews is consuming a lot of welcomed focus. I start thinking about what I want to film the next Friday as we finish filming the previous installment. I keep thinking that future videos should be getting shorter, less theory, more “this is how you do it”, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. I think of more and more things to say. I feel as though I’m taking my half century of knowledge and documenting it so that it can live on even if I don’t or can’t. My daughter, who is my editor, director, producer, videographer, and caption writer, is getting better and better at this, and we have even come up with a way to make my Surface Go act as a teleprompter. I think the dialogue is cleaner if I actually use a script.

Since some of the next content I want to cover, is actually construction techniques, I decided to cut out two jackets, from my 200 Jacket Pattern, one from handwoven (the leftover from my wool/mohair swing coat) and one from a Harris Tweed, given to me by the husband of one of my guild members, deciding he wasn’t going to ever have a jacket made from it. I think he would appreciate that it is being used for educational purposes as well as making a stunning jacket. And it will read better in a video.

And yes, that’s a caviar leather skin in the photo above, I’ll use it for the upper collar, the welt pockets, bound buttonholes and maybe even elbow patches.

The lining for the handwoven jacket is a kimono, which I purchased in pieces from a lovely shop on Whidbey Island, the Jan McGregor Studio. Jan carries all kinds of Japanese items, vintage Japanese textiles and furniture, and it is the most delightful shop I’ve ever been in. I hope it survives the pandemic. The kimono was taken apart carefully, and placed in a bag, which I purchased, and so I was able to use the cloth as a lining. I’ve since ditched the rust which I wanted to use for piping.

In the meantime, looking for hand dyed skeins in my studio for a particular project, I came across a number of skeins of the same very fat silk, all of which I had dyed in different colors at different times, that I thought might be fun in the Confetti draft I developed for using some Silk City Fibers yarns. The draft is free in my eShop.

I did a lot of planning and calculations, and used weaving software to figure out a layout, that would be stripey, but minimally. I’m hoping to eventually play with miters in upcoming garments, so this can help mess around with that option. I spent the weekend winding all the warps…

…sleying, threading and ultimately beaming the warp, and testing out a couple of different wefts.

Meanwhile (Everytime I write that word, I can’t escape Steven Colbert’s segment called “Quarantinewhile” he features on A Late Show.) I’m progressing nicely on the 15 yard warp of towels, which will be my holiday gifts. And then of course, I hit a snag. Something that almost never happens

I had a couple of new cones of Webs 8/2 cotton in black, which I used for the weft, and probably didn’t have enough, but didn’t take the time to actually do the calculations, because there was another unmarked mill end cone of 8/2 in black behind it. And after pulling that cone from the shelf, and doing a quick test, I decided it was probably dry rotted and not a good idea to use, black yarns can be problematic anyway, black dye is so harsh, so I have an order out to WEBS for more 8/2, but it may take a week or two to get it. So the towels will just have to wait. I’m guessing I have about 4 yards to go…

I’m carrying on, texts are flying regularly updating me on family situations, and all I can do is keep busy. Just a couple more weeks and we will pass the shortest day of the year, and we will start moving towards the light.

Stay tuned, stay safe, and stay busy…

Zoom Jacket

Dearest readers and followers on facebook…

You make me laugh.  Oh the uproar when I posted my near completed jacket and mentioned that I wanted to wear it around the house over my pajamas.  Best laugh I’ve had in a week.  Like handwoven anything can only be used for special occasions.  So here’s the thing…

  1. We are trapped at home in quarantine and I have no plans to leave the house for any reason for the remainder of this year, and probably well into the next.
  2. I have a bulging wardrobe of handwoven stuff to wear for special occasions.  Even culling the early stuff, there are 30 years of gorgeous handwoven garments in there, that I have no place to wear.  (And some of them are not fitting me too well either, given that the last nine months has padded my lower half just a bit more than I’d like…)
  3. Being trapped at home spending my days either working in my office at the computer, like I am now, or in the weaving studio, or the sewing room, or the kitchen, means that comfy flannel pajamas, now that the weather is cold (I keep my house at 64 degrees) are my wardrobe of choice.  
  4. I only dress for Zoom meetings, and trust me there are about 50 options for what to wear.  
  5. My beloved go-to knockaround commercially purchased jacket that I throw on when I get out of bed in the morning, and take off at night, hanging it on the coat tree in my room, is getting worn, old, boring, and it needs to move on.
  6. I want something cuddly, roomy, with large pockets, and can also hang on the coat rack every night without getting the center back neck bump from the hook.

Enter this fabric which recently came off the loom.

I blogged about it in the last post, and there is a link in the last post to the details, what I used as a draft, the warp and the weft, in the last post from when I first put this fabric on the loom almost two years ago.  I love the colors, and this fabric I knew would be challenging to lay out.  The coloring was formed from the engineered gradient in the Noro Taiyo Lace skeins I was using.  Though they were engineered to repeat themselves, when a dreaded knot in the skein would appear, or I had to change skeins, the sequence was thrown off.  So I did the best I could…

I had lots of unwanted assistance, trying to lay this out, stretched all across the sewing room floor which is in the basement, and all the way into the utility closet.  The cat was very amused…

It took two days of moving pieces around to get what I wanted.  The fabric wasn’t really wide enough, but fortunately last Friday’s YouTube video shoot was on that very topic, What to do When You Don’t have Enough Fabric.  So I shared some of the tips I did in this garment to try to make the most out of what I have.  That video should drop next Friday.  It is still in edits.  (Who am I kidding, she hasn’t started editing yet, she waits until the day before…)

Anyway, I wanted something unfussy, and perhaps crocheted around the perimeter, so I wouldn’t have to fuss with hems, or facings, or bands, whatever.  And I wanted big pockets.  I pulled my 100 Jacket, chose a larger size than I would normally take, so I’d have roomier sleeves to fit over whatever I was wearing, overlayed the neck from the 800 vest pattern, and extended the fronts 3 inches so they would fall back into a mock collar, but still could overlap to keep my chest warm when I really wanted to snuggle. (It is on my list of topics for my YouTube channel The Weaver Sews, to illustrate how to combine patterns, putting a sleeve on the swing dress, combining patterns for different necklines, etc.)

I got exactly what I wanted, and posted it on facebook last night.

Hahahahahah!  The responses were wonderful.  I love you all.  The outrage that I’d wear this over my pajamas was truly hilarious.  Of course it is a beautiful jacket.  Of course it should be seen out in the world.  But that isn’t realistic right now.  I’m not going anywhere.  I need to keep safe, healthy and not burden the hospital system because I was stupid.  It is worrisome enough that my son, who is an interim general manager at a local Target is exposed every day, so far has tested negative, but is going into the retail season from hell.  He is not allowed near the house.  NJ lived through hell last April, and we are there again, I’ve lost count of how many have died, almost 17,000 in our state alone.  It is as if my whole town got wiped off the map, and half of the next one as well.

And so, I will wrap myself up in a lovely comfy handwoven sweatery coat, and go about my day in comfort.  And smile dreaming of a time when I can go out and about and show it off.

So here are some of the observations and details.  Because you really don’t know how comfy and snuggly something is until you wear it.

First, since the fabric wasn’t wide enough, I moved the side seams towards the back so I could get a full back from the fabric, and used a crocheted seam finish, overlapping the seam with the fronts.  I cover this in the video that will drop next week.

You can clearly see in the photos above where I’m wearing the jacket that the collar points and lower front edges tend to curl inward.  There isn’t a facing for support, so I’d expect that.  I kept thinking about my late husband’s dress shirts and the little collar stays that would keep points crisp, and I remembered I have a drawer full of zip ties, and there are some really tiny ones in there.  I’ve used zip ties as boning in garments that call for that, so why not as collar stays.  I slipped a few behind the crocheted edges and I’ll let you know how well they work.  Already there is an improvement, time will tell if they hold.

And I dug through my box of inkle bands, and found this lovely narrow black band I wove to help support the sloppy neckline in a sweater I knit.  There was enough left to make a loop at the back neck for hanging my jacket at night on the coat tree.  That’s the sad very well worn jacket it is replacing on the left of the coat tree.

There are a couple of negatives that I really can’t do much about, one is that the wool (Harrisville Shetland singles from the 80’s) in the warp isn’t the softest.  That yarn typically isn’t meant for next to skin.  So the jacket is a bit scratchy, but I have a good tolerance for scratchy wool.  The good news is it should wash and dry pretty easily, I tossed the original fabric in the washer and dryer twice to get it to full up.  That will be important wearing it every day.

And the other negative of course is that I have a bunch of animals, that insist on curling up when ever I sit down, right in my lap, even the ones that weigh 60 pounds.  Animal hair sticks to it.  It was challenging crocheting around the edges and constantly pulling cat hair out of the yarn as I pulled up loops.  And I do vacuum often I can assure you.  But the good news is that unlike a fleece jacket, the hair comes off easily with a lint roller, it doesn’t seem to embed itself into the structure.  So I’m hopeful my new comfy jacket will prove to be my best friend in the coming months.  I want to wear this so much I wear it out!  

And speaking of Zoom…  I’ve spent many hours on Zoom meetings over the last number of months, and found that knitting wasn’t really for me a great idea, I was making mistakes on the sweater I was knitting in the decorative patterned border.  I don’t multi task well.  Really.  

So instead, I started pulling out my bags and baskets of thrums from past warps, most of which were hand dyed yarns, maybe 18-24″ lengths, and started tying them together. I keep the large basket of thrums now under the table where I Zoom.  Years ago, one of our beloved guild members, who has since passed, came to a September meeting fresh from a MAFA conference.  She had taken a workshop with Tom Knisely, a beloved weaver and teacher who has written a number of books, and one of the techniques she learned was something called Zanshi.  It is a Japanese technique for using leftover thrums and yarns so nothing goes to waste.  Tom talks about it in his book about Table Linens.

Anyway, the guild member showed her sample from the workshop and I was intrigued.  Thrums were tied together with overhand knots and the tails just got woven in.  Plain weave, couldn’t be simpler.  So I started tying my thrums together.  Mindless but productive while I sat through endless meetings.  I had a beautiful rayon/cotton discontinued yarn from Silk City Fibers called Marbella, in a greyed brown color called Bison for the warp.  I kept the warp narrow so I’d have a bit of color building from the short thrums.  I’m loving this.  And no, I have no idea what I’m going to do with this fabric.  I just like to weave…

Stay safe everyone, celebrate this season with whatever silver linings you can find.  Life is getting curiouser and curiouser, feeling more like Alice in Wonderland every day, there is some whacky crap in that story, worth a reread!

Stay tuned…

 

Two in one weekend, it was a busy week…

Huge apologies right up front.  I have never posted two blog posts back to back in the same weekend.  Yesterday’s blog was a story of triumph, but there was lots more to tell on my week of extreme productivity. So indulge me this one…

I worked hard to get all of my floor looms filled with something interesting for the virtual HGA studio tour that we filmed back on October 8th.  That meant that every loom had something going on, and my daughter, who is madly prepping for this lecture next week, needed a floor loom or two to be empty, and I’ve got ideas of what I want to put on a loom that isn’t available.  

So the only thing to do, is to just weave.  I had a couple cranky mishaps with a couple of looms, parts get old and worn, especially cords, and I’ll need to do a bit of repair work, or had to repair in the middle of a large piece of yardage, when the front crank broke in two in my hand…

Despite roadblocks, I managed on Monday to clear one of the 4 shaft floor looms, of yardage that has been there for a couple of years.  It was a welcome site when the knots came over the back beam!  

I pulled 7 yards off the loom, and popped that baby in the washer.

The end result is really pretty.  A flower garden.  I have ideas for the yardage, but nothing set in stone.

In case you want the details, I wrote up the yarns and the draft back in a post in January of 2019, scroll way down to find the information here…

So Tuesday I had to set up a complicated Zoom class, which I was to give that night, the night of the election here in the states, for a group in Toronto.  I spent the morning getting the camera and lighting right for the live demo on the loom.  The topic was “doup leno”, a structure I wrote about in a lengthy article for Heddlecraft Jan/Feb 2019 I believe.  

Once I was set up, I decided to kill a few hours until showtime, by weaving on another floor loom.  And pretty soon, the knots were up and over the back.

This yardage was one of the ones I put on the loom to play around with one of the new yarns from Silk City Fibers.  I combined the Nile cotton tape with their traditional Skinny Majesty Variegated, in a simple plain weave.  And after some extensive testing, which I talked about in an earlier post, I ended up using Silk City Fiber’s Deluxe Wool Crepe.  Which is Merino and rayon.  This is my new favorite weft.  Highly recommend.  I can’t wait to do something with this fabric.  It feels amazing and the wool crepe weft keeps the rayon in check.

Anyway, because the yarns came from Silk City Fibers, I wrote up the specs and the draft for what I’m calling Antique Jewels and it is available in my eShop for free.  Click here.

Wednesday was a tough day.  I had to teach again in the morning, after a very successful, at least I thought so, class Tuesday night.  Because no results were declared Tuesday night, and I didn’t expect them to be, I didn’t sleep all night, and I suspect neither did most people in the US.  So bleary eyed I logged onto my class Wednesday morning, and I believe all went well, and this time no landscape crew came by to blow my leaves like the class the week before.  Wednesday night was my guild meeting and we had a terrific program with an old weaving friend of mine, Sheila O’Hara.  I’m blown away by how easy it is to bring a guest speaker from 3000 miles away for an evening lecture.  She was fantastic.  We are only about a year apart in age, and studied the fiber arts in college about the same time in the 70’s, it is amazing how different our paths took as weavers.  She was one of the first to truly embrace Jacquard weaving.

So Thursday, prior to the debacle I covered in yesterday’s post , I managed to clear yet another loom.  This one was also the result of a challenge with yarns from Silk City Fibers.  An odd combination, but I took their new poofy Cotton Bambu, and combined it in a light/dark 8 shaft shadow weave with their old standby chenille, in a variegated color.  The two worked perfectly together, and I soon had the knots over the back beam as well.

The fabric was a bit coarse when I pulled it off the loom, kind of what you would make a carpet bag from, but never the less, I went to the washing machine and tossed it all in. 

What came out is the most gorgeous, glorious fabric you’ve ever felt.  Cotton Bambu doesn’t have any body weight behind it, but in this context it became gorgeously flexible and mixed with the velvety feel of the chenille, I can’t wait to weave more in a larger piece of yardage.  I wrote up the specs for this fabric as well, which I call Shadow Tapestry, and again, the PDF download with the draft is free.  You can find it here.

I’m off to the studio to weave another scarf on one of the other floor looms, and then do stupid stuff like clean my bedroom and bath, annoying Sunday chores, though I can’t wait to remake the bed with the new sheets I just got from LL Bean.  Portuguese organic cotton flannel.  Looking forward to a good night sleep tonight. I had a set from the last couple of years, but when I went to change my sheets with the change of season, from linen to cotton flannel, I discovered that my daughter had swiped them.  They were on her bed.  So shopping I went for another set!

Stay safe everyone, one of my closest friends was just diagnosed with Covid.  These are scary times…  Stay tuned… 

 

That’s not why I did it…

It has been a very long time since I’ve dealt with a major loom screw up.  A really long time.  Like I don’t remember the last time?  And it isn’t because I’m so very good at this whole weaving thing, but it sort of is.  I’ve been weaving since the mid 70’s.  If there is a mistake, or screw up, I can assure you I made it or did it at some point in my career.  One of the glorious things about being a weaver is the pure tenacity that controls what we do and how we approach a situation.  

Of course by now, you are all familiar with my daughter and her major accomplishments as a weaver.  She works for me now, and is responsible for converting all of my garment patterns into digital downloads.  She is also responsible for filming, producing and editing all of my videos for my YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews and writing all of the Closed Captioning.  (Yes, I caught that there were a couple of misspellings in previous episodes…)  I couldn’t have moved into this next portion of my professional life without her, but that’s not why I did it…

My daughter, Brianna, yes she has a real name, not the one she uses on Facebook, was asked back last winter if she would give a lecture to her old weaving guild in MA, near where she went to school.  The lecture, on differential sett, was scheduled for April of this year.  And of course we all know what happened in the northeast by April.  The world was cancelled.

Since my daughter is a soon to be 28 year old millennial, she does her best work under deadline pressure.  (Truth be told, so do I…)  The guild called her last week and asked if she would be willing to give the lecture remotely.  Hahahahah!  Of course she said yes, which is what I would have done at that age.  I use to have a sign on  my studio door that said, “Say yes, then worry…”

So my daughter had to build an entire lecture that only existed as an outline, and weave all the samples in less than two weeks (the lecture is next week), plus edit and create new content for me, plus work in the evenings on her schooling, (yes, she is still in school to get her vet tech license).  But that’s not why I did it….

One of the samples Brianna decided to weave, was exploring what happens when you use differential sett with really slippery rayon, warp and weft, and then slippery rayon warp and a dragging kind of weft like Shetland wool.  The sample with the slippery rayon warp, though challenging, was completely successful.  She then wound a warp with the Shetland wool, and the idea was she would tie into the rayon warp and repeat the experiment with a rayon weft and a wool weft, producing an additional two samples.  

At one point, she said to me, as I was weaving on another of the looms in the studio, “This is ridiculous, tying in a new warp, I could have started fresh, sleying and rethreading in half the time…”  and I couldn’t disagree with her.  I’ve never found tying in a new warp to be a time saver.

I went off to do something else and came back and she had only tied in about 2/3rds of the warp, and she moved onto a different loom to do other samples of different weave structures.  She told me that she was fed up and didn’t have the time to waste tying in 600 ends on a table loom.  But that’s not why I did it…

I went off to other projects of my own, like writing the script for Friday’s The Weaver Sews Youtube installment.  I came back and decided to finish tying in the rest of the warp, which would have been 200 ends.  It wasn’t a big deal, and I can do stuff like that in my sleep.  I was surprised when she directed me to make a square knot, I had always tied in new warps with an overhand knot, but I learned long ago that I didn’t argue with my late husband, and I don’t argue with his daughter.  Even though I have almost a half century of experience…

I finished the task and then turned the job of beaming the 1  1/2 yard warp of sticky Shetland wool, onto the warp beam, over to my daughter.  I think I went off to bed…

I came back the next day to find the warp abandoned.  It was a complete disaster.  I don’t think even at my worst I’ve ever had a mess like that.  Partly I take some responsibility because my daughter has worked along side of me since she first learned to throw a shuttle.  She never had the opportunity to fall flat on her face, like most weavers, including me, have had to do.  I’ve always been there to guide her, when she chooses to listen to me.  But that’s not why I did it…

Largely what happened, is that when she put tensioning bars in the back of the warp, and tried to beam the new sticky Shetland warp into the old slick rayon warp, the square knots didn’t hold, they slipped right out.  And for some reason, the Shetland wool ends, that slipped out of the knots, ended up in the front of the beater, probably about 200 of the 600 ends.  I think this wins an award for the most messed up warp I’ve ever seen.  That’s partly why I did it…

I felt really sorry for my daughter, she was trying so hard to see this lecture into fruition…  But that’s not why I did it…

I felt partly responsible because I knew that when you tie in a warp, you always use overhand knots.  There are a lot of things I know, but I don’t know why I know them.  And because my daughter requested square knots, I obliged.  But that’s not why I did it…

I laid awake all Thursday night haunted by the mess on one of the looms in the garage right underneath of me.  I kept thinking, if that were me, I wouldn’t have gone to bed without fixing it.  But that’s me, even though I knew I had a video to shoot in the morning. I didn’t sleep the whole night.  My daughter just moved to a different loom, and started on a different group of samples she had been planning.

In fact my daughter was so upset by what happened that she couldn’t even look at the loom. She couldn’t even walk over to that area of the studio.   She is not use to having major loom screw ups…  I’ve largely protected her from that…  But that’s not why I did it…

We stopped everything to shoot the new video Friday morning, and I had some computer/business stuff to attend to, but Friday afternoon, I sat at the loom and thought, it has been a very long time since I’ve bailed a loom out of a major temper tantrum, and you know what?  I really wanted to just dive in there and fix it.  That’s why I wanted to do it.

A couple of years ago, I had my new to me dog chew up a skein of yarn that was being wound into pirns for the weft yarn for a project I was working on.  I got distracted by the doorbell, and when I returned I found  the skein stretched around my loom, and all the way down the stairs, and the skein chewed beyond help.  I can’t believe the number of weaver’s who offered to have me send them the skein and promised to untangle every last yard.  There is something about fixing a monumental disaster that is really appealing for a weaver.  

I sort of think that it has to do with creating calm in chaos.  There is so little in the world that we have any control over.  But what happens at our looms, that thing, we have control over.  And if what happens on our looms becomes total chaos, then patience, tenacity, and time will make it work.  That’s why I did it.  

So I started Friday afternoon, after the shoot, and I began to reassess the 600 ends and how to best resolve the mess.  Cutting the whole thing off and starting over was an option, but it would mean wasting a perfectly good 1 1/2 yard Shetland warp, that I paid good money for…

I decided that the best way out, was to carefully pull the warps that ended up in front of the reed, since they were only 1 1/2 yards, and resleying them where required (because this was a differential sett warp, there were dents where there were as many as five ends) and then carefully tying them back into the slippery rayon warps that went through the heddles, one by one.  I probably spent 10 hours.  This was really really challenging.

I did it because there is something intensely satisfying about bringing order to chaos.  There is something intense about saving a project.  I had my doubts that this was even weaveable, 5 ends of Shetland in a 12 dent reed on a table loom didn’t see realistic, but that wasn’t for me to judge.  I grabbed my 5X glasses, a magnifying OTT lite, and a sley hook and started in.  10 hours later I was triumphant.  

As I suspected, the warp was unweaveable at that dentage, Brianna had to pull some of the densest parts of the warp, but after much bitching and kvetching, she managed to get the sample she needed, but that’s not why I did it…

For all of you out there who have ever had to deal with the warp from hell, remember that there is something healing in finally controlling that which would not be controlled, something triumphant about making something from total chaos.  And that’s  why I did it.  It has been a long time since I’ve had to bail out a major loom screw up, and I loved every minute of it.  It wasn’t my screw up, but I felt like a warrior on a mission and I was ultimately successful.  Mission accomplished.  It was sort of poignant that in the middle of the last inch and a half, that the election finals were called.  No matter who you supported, the wait is over.  And there is a sort of relief there, and now we as a nation can move forward to what I hope is a common goal.  My ten hours of determination over a warp from hell was finally over.  And I won.

Brianna did manage to beam and weave the new samples.  She did as I suspected have to cull some of the warps in the densest part of the reed.  But she learned that on her own.  And she also learned that when tying in a new warp, you should use overhand knots.  But kids learn by falling flat on their faces and picking themselves up and reevaluating the experience.  I never had anyone to tell me otherwise, so I learned the hard way, by trial and error, but that weaver’s tenacity kept me moving forward.  

 

To say that I’m so proud of the body of samples she has produced as a result of this exploration in differential sett would be an understatement.  And what she has learned from things that I would have loved to have prevented from my vast experience would have deprived both of us from an experience that ultimately benefitted both of us.  

So next time you are faced with the warp from hell, have a drink, and dive in head first.  There is some personal triumph that no one else but a weaver will understand…

Stay tuned…